nautilus
Americannoun
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Also called chambered nautilus, pearly nautilus. any cephalopod of the genus Nautilus, having a spiral, chambered shell with pearly septa.
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(initial capital letter) the first nuclear-powered submarine launched by the U.S. Navy.
noun
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any cephalopod mollusc of the genus Nautilus, esp the pearly nautilus
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short for paper nautilus
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of nautilus
1595–1605; < Latin < Greek nautílos paper nautilus, literally, sailor, derivative of naûs ship; the webbed dorsal arms of the paper nautilus were thought to have been used as sails
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Agnoli, who worked as a carpenter prior to entering architecture, used long spans of wood to create massive trusses and spiraling nautilus shapesand formed brick into catenary arches.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2025
The results suggest nautilus shells, orderly yet beguilingly sinuous.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 24, 2023
The storm had twisted the structure's metal roof like a nautilus shell and rolled it out into the street.
From Salon ● Feb. 23, 2023
Like their nautilus relatives, scientists found that argonauts have protein-coding genes needed to build what scientists call “true shells,” the kind you find around an oyster.
From New York Times ● Nov. 5, 2022
Next to the glass, a small wooden bookshelf in the shape of a nautilus shell holds a curved spiral of librex.
From "The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera
He has been able to classify many of these creatures, some of them being allied to the nautili, nummuli, cyprides, &c.
From Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Chambers, Robert
In the fossiliferous rocks below the tertiary, we find immense numbers of nautili, ammonites, and other kindred genera of polythalamous shells, called cephalopods, which were all carnivorous.
From The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences by Hitchcock, Edward
After a season our shell-fish will spawn; the eggs of the scalaria cling together—like a string of pearls; those of the nautili adhere to one another by sixes, in shape of a star.
From Told by the Death's Head A Romantic Tale by J?kai, M?r
The shell is very different from those of the other nautili in being much more deeply indented with circular striae.
From Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2 by Grey, George
However, to cut my story short, the quickened scalaria, and nautili, immediately began to form their shells in the reversed order I had expected, and the secret of fabulous enrichment was solved.
From Told by the Death's Head A Romantic Tale by J?kai, M?r
The concrete nautiluses where we temporarily abandon our Kias and Porsches and mopeds produce, reproduce and shelter dualities.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2022
Metalsmiths set nautiluses on gold pedestals sculpted with mermaid and sea foam motifs.
From New York Times ● Sep. 2, 2021
From that documentation, Schmitz is even willing to describe what time travelers might see if they stopped to visit the mighty nautiluses of the era.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 19, 2019
In oceanic terms, squids, cuttlefish, nautiluses, and octopuses are mass-produced.
From Slate ● Mar. 1, 2018
Still, for my part, I should have preferred fair weather, bright skies, and plenty of nautiluses and flying-fish.
From A Jolly Fellowship by Stockton, Frank Richard
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
